Anti-fracking film Promised Land gives Big Oil new audience

Promised Land gives fracking industry new audience

Big Oil never thought it could compete with Hollywood on narratives, but Matt Damon’s anti-fracking movie may have given the industry an opening to get its message out.

Promised Land, released on Friday, has been panned by critics and garnered a poor rating of 54 out of a possible 100 points gleaned from previews of 29 movie critics by metacritic.com (as a contrast, the movie Lincoln earned 86 points).

“Left-wingers in the mainstream media — by which I mean me — are supposed to lap up a movie that plays to our farm-loving, tree-hugging prejudices,” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote in one of the more savage reviews. “But even we know that well-meaning does not automatically equal good movie.”

The film directed by Gus Van Sant pits Mr. Damon as an out-of- town gas-company land man facing off against an environmentalist played by John Krasinski in the fictional town of McKinley. The industry uses cash bribes, hard sells and Machiavellian maneuvers to get its way.

Emboldened by the poor previews, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group, plans to run ads in 75% of Pennsylvania’s movie theaters, encouraging audiences to get “straightforward facts” by visiting a website focused on shale gas. The state has seen its natural gas production quadruple thanks to horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus shale formation.

“It’s difficult to fact-check a work of fiction, so I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do that any more than we can fact-check ‘Batman,’” spokesman Steve Forde told the Associated Press. “But certainly shale gas development is generating discussion around dinner tables, it’s an important discussion to have, and that’s the angle we are looking at.”

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Taken together, the industry campaigns — at Pennsylvania movie theaters, on a website and using social media –underscore efforts to combat negative perceptions about fracking.

This is strange, new territory for the oil and gas industry, which is more comfortable with the hard science of drilling rather than the creative art of moviemaking. But hammered by the environmental movement over the past few years, the industry is making a concerted effort to hit back.

This film is purely a work of fiction and is not reflective of the work our industry undertakes

Instead of direct attacks they are trying to paint Matt Damon’s movie as derivative, condescending and cliched.

“This film is purely a work of fiction and is not reflective of the work our industry undertakes, all done within an aggressive and effective regulatory framework,” critiques the Marcellus Shale Coalition in a statement that precedes a selection of bad reviews the movie garnered. “Our focus remains on creating even more American jobs, safely producing our abundant, clean-burning, domestic natural gas resources, revitalizing rural communities and our nation’s manufacturing base, and most importantly, doing it in a way that is safe. We live and raise our families in these communities, and have an unmatched commitment to protecting our air, water and environment.”

And the industry is feeling confident it can take on Promised Land’s low-key effort to paint fracking as a technological evil.

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“They may have Matt Damon and Jim from ‘The Office’ on their side, but we’ve got the facts, the science, the consensus of regulators, and a 65-year track record of performance and safety on ours. So we think that’s a pretty fair fight,” Mr. Tucker told AP.

But the industry is treading lightly as the wounds of the backlash against Gasland are all too fresh.

Josh Fox’s Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary showed a homeowner living near a fracking site setting fire to water from his kitchen tap and was lapped by the green movement.

“Gasland lends itself to rebuttal and correction in a way that Promised Land does not,” Mr. Tucker said. At an industry conference in November, the Promised Land script showed Mr. Damon defending fracking for two-thirds of the movie, “and he does a pretty good job of it.”

Mr. Tucker’s group created a site featuring local landowners, RealPromisedLand.org. “On this site, you won’t find any actors, scripts or manufactured storylines,” Energy in Depth said on the site, which doesn’t specifically mention the movie or Damon. “What you will find here is real people, with real stories, about how development has impacted them and their families.

‘‘These aren’t stories you’re likely to see out at the movies,” it said. “But we think they’re pretty remarkable, just the same.”

Proponents of the drilling practice in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania — where the movie was filmed — posted comments on Facebook expressing their disappointment with the movie’s tone.

Supporters of the practice will soon have their own film, as Phelim McAleer is set to release on Jan. 7 his Fracknation, which questions the critics of the practice. Mr. McAleer paid for space on a billboard in upstate New York, which says, “Matt Damon: the water has been on fire since 1669.”

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